Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal invest in an offline games start-up MadRat Games

Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, have made an investment in an offline games start-up MadRat Games.

Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, have made an investment in an offline games start-up MadRat Games.

BENGALURU: The poster boys of ecommerce in India, Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, have made an investment in an offline games start-up MadRat Games. The other investors who have participated in the funding round of about $1 million (about Rs 6.2 crore) include the founders of IT outsourcing firm GlobalLogic – Rajul Garg, Sanjay Singh, Manoj Agarwala and Tarun Upadhyay. MadRat, founded in 2010, started out by launching a Hindi word game Aksharit.

Since then, the company started by IIT graduates Rajat Dhariwal, Manuj Dhariwal and Madhumita Halder has launched over 70 board games, puzzles and toys. The young firm, which distributes its products primarily through offline stores, plans to use the funds for branding, marketing and expansion. Its existing investors Blume Ventures and First Light Ventures did not participate in this round. When the company completed a year of distributing the games through retail stores earlier this year, the founders decided to take stock of how the business is doing. "We were doing very well in sales," said RajatDhariwal, the company's chief executive. The company had turnover of Rs 3 crore last fiscal. The market is large, with the Indian toy industry expected to expand to Rs 13,000 crore in 2015, according to a report by industry body Assocham. "Our vision is to provide active engagement to children and we realised we needed to be more disruptive for explosive growth," said Dhariwal. MadRat did a market survey and realised that while parents knew their games, they did not know the brand.

"That was a jolt for us and we decided to do a whole rebranding exercise," said Dhariwal. Earlier, the company had a product-centric approach, with a unique design for each of its games, but now it has come up with a brand new look for its games and also rethought its distribution strategy that it took to potential investors. "We decided to pitch to passionate entrepreneurs as they have been there and have taken a leap of faith themselves," said Dhariwal, who quit his job with Amazon to teach at Rishi Valley School for three years before launching MadRat.

"Flipkart's founders have a great understanding of consumer branding and we felt an instant connect with Rajul." The company does sell its products through online sites such as Flipkart and Amazon, but these portals contribute only about 5% to its sales. “Innovation is at the core of MadRat's approach to disrupt the market and led by a team of very talented individuals they enjoy a strong competitive advantage in the industry,” said Sachin Bansal, chief executive of Flipkart.

MadRat, which was selling through 2,000 stores, will now focus on retailing through 50 stores. "Typically toys and games of different brands are grouped together on the same shelves. We want to set up custom shelves that will showcase only our products," said Dhariwal. "The retailers will do this only if we are significant contributors to their revenue." The company plans to launch its own experience store in Bangalore soon and use customer data from the retail stores for future marketing and product design. "The toys and games industry in India is pre-historic, with no major product or business innovation for the past decade," said Dhariwal. "We are changing that."

0Comments

Are you a Business Owner? Get Your Free Business Listing on Economic Times.